Hello, I just got home from purchasing a Mossberg 500 for home defense (and possibly a little hunting) purposes.  It is bone stock and just has the bead sight at the end of the barrel.

My question is what sort of upgrades do you experts suggest and what sort of prices am I looking at for them.  Thanks!

I'm no expert but here's my thoughts:
Extended mag tube - $40
Side Saddle             -   30
Slling                        -   20

That's all I have on my 870.

For home defense? Ammo, pure and simple. You can do a fine job of protecting home and hearth with the standard, bone stock gun...but not without ammo. I prefer #000 Buck but you may have other ideas. The vast majority of mods done to "tactical" shotguns may be nice, especially for an extended fight, but that is a very unlikely scenario for home defense...there, one, maybe two or three, rounds, and you are almost always done.

Quoted: You can do a fine job of protecting home and hearth with the standard, bone stock gun...... The vast majority of mods done to "tactical" shotguns may be nice, especially for an extended fight, but that is a very unlikely scenario for home defense..

I couldn't agree more ....and I'd love to hear who on this board has been in an 'extended fight' recently, and if so did having all that 'tactical' stuff help?......ECS

I hate to say it because all that stuff is kind of neat but I agree with the above philosiphy also.  I saw a picture of a marine in a book called "guns up" in vietnam.  It was the first book I could find a picture of a guy carrying a shotgun " in country."  They said in the caption it was his trade mark.  They showed him firing off a bridge allegedly at nva or vc and another picture of him with it slung over his back.  It was very basic.  Looked like an 870 with wood stocks of course, and a short little maybe 18" or 20" barrel with a beed.  That was it.  He did however have either a sling with with the shells on it or a bandolier but there was a bunch of shells on the thing around his upper body.  So like the man said, you need ammo.  A light would make me feel good too though for self defense purposes.  But in my state, the hunting regs say you can't have it on there while hunting anyways.

-Slings are tough for shotguns, especially the popular 3-point kind.  
-Mossbergs (the 500s, 590's) don't take well to mag extensions.  
-Sidesaddles heat up on the aluminum receiver.  

I'd get:
-Shortened stock, w/ Burseed or GG&G single point loop for a sling,
-Ammo

How long's the barrel?  

What does shortened stock with burseed mean?????????

www.gggaz.com/products/870shotgun.php
Single point sling mount fits between the stock and receiver.  Burnseed was the guy behind the concept, IIRC.  

www.speedfeedinc.com/products.html
Shortened stock to reduce LOP.  The factory one is really long, and it's tough to cut down the plastic one.  It gets longer with the sling loop.  

I hadn't thought about a slight... right now its got the mounts at the end of the magazine tube and near the butt of the stock.

I've got a mixture of Federal 9 pellets 00 buck and these strange Activ rifled slugs that came highly recommended.  Oh and a couple 20 round boxes of winchester sporting clay shells for target practice.

Question about storage... do you leave it with the magazine full and nothing in the chamber or just ready to go with the safety on?

There are those who will differ with me, but I prefer to store all defensive long guns with empty chamber unless there is an over-riding reason not to. The "safety" on your shotgun...and almost all long guns with very few exceptions...only acts to physically block rearward movement of the trigger. It does not, and will not, prevent the hammer (or striker in the case of, say, a bolt rifle, etc.) from going forward and firing a chambered round should the gun get dropped or slammed hard against a solid surface, etc. and the hammer "jump" the sear...I have seen it happen more than once.

My defense shotgun is stored chamber empty because, for me, it is a "go and get it" gun, and thus is not the first firearm I grab...that would be a 1911 with NS's and my SureFire. If, on the other hand, it WAS my primary gun, or if I had, say, a death contract put out on me by a major bunch of bad asses, etc. I would take the chance and load the chamber. Small childern, your particular lifestyle, location within the home, and other things will also influence what condition you decide to store the weapon in. It is really a choice that only you can make for yourself.

I will say that the single biggest "field failure" of the shotgun in LE use is the failure of the officer to take the safety "off" before trying to fire the weapon...happens all the time if officers are not trained regularly with them, and I mean "trained", not "familarized"...which is all too common. Thus, train yourself with it in the same condition you will always store it. You may not have the luxury of being able to figure things out on the fly if the barbarians are coming through the door right NOW!

Quoted: Question about storage... do you leave it with the magazine full and nothing in the chamber or just ready to go with the safety on?

I keep mine with a full mag and the chamber mostly open in a Mossberg Loc Box with the safety off. The Loc Box blocks the chamber so it's really the only option with that device. This way I just open the action the rest of the way, close it and it's ready to go.

I have to agree with what ikor said. Most long guns don't have the same attention paid to the safety mechanisms that handguns do. So, I don't really trust them to prevent an accidental discharge.

Mike

So all you have to do to smooth out the action is shoot it alot?  I like that kind of gunsmithing!

Mag extension is a MAJOR job on Mossbergs, not a simple screw-on/take off like 870s. But you can prolly get along without it.

What barrel length do you have? If it's over 20", get it down. Go buy the cheapest M500 unribbed barrel you can find (you can find them around $50 if you look) and hacksaw it off to 18 1/2", presto, you're in bidness. Mossberg makes a neat "turkey gun" barrel that's 20" with interchangeable chokes and vent rib--if you want to get by with one barrel for everything, that will do nicely.

Your next money should be spent on AMMO. Find out if there's a skeet club or league in your area and go hang out with them. Shoot skeet once or twice a week until you are hitting more than you are missing. You don't have to be club champ but by the time you are consistently breaking 16-18 birds (out of 25) you will be a VERY formidable combat shotgun opponent. Doing this will also slick up your gun, bring out any potential functioning problems, and give you practice and confidence in operating it smoothly and quickly. If you ask skeet club guys what to do and how to hit, and DO IT, you can reach this level in a matter of just a few weeks, maybe even quicker.

Next, buy a copy of Massad Ayoob's book Stressfire II: Advanced Combat Shotgun. This is without question THE FINEST book ever written on combat shotgunnery.  It'll run you about $12 and the information in it is worth at least ten times that.

Don't spend another penny on bling-bling or "gun toys" until you've done these three things. And after you've done them, you'll have a much better idea of what YOU will want and need to do next.

A light. You need to see what you are shooting for home defense. Next I would go with a good recoil pad such as the new simms vibration I have been hearing about, so you wont mind paraticing as much. Then if you want a cheap way to carry extra ammo get a blackhawk buttstock ammo carrier. They are about 20. They hold six on the outside on hoops and can hold another 7 inside. I carry on the outside 4 buck loded from the bottom and 2 slugs loaded from the stock so I dont have to look to know what I am loading. The side saddle is a good product too Then practice and  pattern your shot gun.

A light is probably the most important accessory.  The Surefire foreend is expensive, but very nice.

Even if you aren't in an "extended gun battle" with a shotgun, its nice to have the side-saddle, because it give you the option of switching to slugs if you need to.  If, God forbid, one of your loved ones are in the hands of a bad guy, how willing are you to trust your ability to offset your buckshot pattern enough to miss your loved one, and hit the bad guy?  With slugs as an option, this isn't an issue.  Plus, they sure do a lot of damage.

Stay away from butt-stock sleeve ammo holders.  If you have to shoot left-handed (and the world has just as many left-handed corners as right-handed corners), these make it much more difficult.

Stick with a very simple sling, with a large loop hanging down.  The only thing you need the sling for is to retain your gun when you need to use both hands.  Single-point and other "tactical slings" seem like a swell idea, until you have to actually perform a physical task (like carrying a wounded person) while using one of these slings.  With a standard sling, or a three-point sling set-up with just a large loop, its a simple task to sling your gun across your back, muzzle up or down.  Your hands are now completely free to perform necessary tasks, and your gun isn't swinging around, bouncing off of things (like the body of the person you're dragging).

The wound ballistics experts recommend standard loads of #1 buckshot.  Whatever ammo you use, make sure it works flawlessly in your gun.  Some european ammo doesn't work so well in Mossbergs (S&B Buckshot, Fiocci Buckshot).

If this is going to be your primary home defense gun, keep it loaded with the safety on.  Although some people think it would be cool to scare a bad guy with the sound of a round being jacked into a chamber, I'm not interesting in scaring a bad guy, I'm interested in eliminating him as a threat.  If you have to chamber a round, the bad guy will hear it and know that there is an armed defender in the house.  This may make him much more agressive / dangerous.  If I were ever in a home defense situation, the first indicator that there is an armed defender in the home that I want to give a bad guy, is the high intensity light shining in his face.  The second indicator will be the "bang", after he's been positively identified as a threat that needs to be neutralized.

I have two 500's and a 590.  They are excellent guns.  

Now get out there and shoot.  Better yet, take a Tactical Shotgun class.  It will be an eye opener.

We can not use side saddles on our duty shotguns do to the way they mount. I have been using the blackhawk sleve mount for several years, including several tactical shools w/out problems/ True I wold prefer a side saddle, but the Blackhawk has never caused me a problem.

Try some Remington or Federal reduced recoil 00 buck and slugs.  They seem to pattern more consistently out of my Mossberg 590 and the reduced recoil is nice.